Social Cognitive Theory on Personality

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the study of social cognitive theory and personality. It describes the different cognitive factors that affect personality beginning with children and continuing into old age. The paper analyzes the processing of social and emotional information, whether it is looking at people's faces, their nonverbal communication or the way people gain and access information about others.

Table of Contents:
Abstract
Social Cognitive Theory in Relation to Personality
Social Cognitive Theories in Relationship to Personalities
Looking at Children's Cognitive Knowledge and Personalities
The Effects of Age on Social Cognition
Social Cognition Theories on Social Cognitive Processes

From the Paper:

"The social-cognitive knowledge an individual has is used in different ways and often this cognitive knowledge is used to decide if a person wants to associate with someone based on the type of personality the person has and the knowledge of this type of personality schema that is stored in the individual's mind. Social-cognitive psychologists believe that simple things such as posture, faces, attitudes, or motor behavior of an individual can conflict with the cognitive knowledge of an individual and make them not like another person who has similar features. "A second property of knowledge that may be important in this inference process of judging whether an attitude is an informative guide to behavior is the complexity of the knowledge underlying the attitude" (Fabrigar, Smith, Petty, and Crites 2006, 556). Both children and adults use cognitive knowledge and experience to decide whether a person is worthy of trust or if they do not like a person based on the individual's personality."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Barsalou, L. (2006). Perceptual symbol systems. Retrieved Oct. 15, 2006, from http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.barsalou.html
• Carnaghi, A. & Vincent Yzerbyt. (2006). Social consensus and the encoding of consistent and inconsistent information: When one's future audience orients information processing. European Journal of Social Psychology 36, 199-210.
• Dickhauser, O. & M. Reinhard. (2006). Factors underlying expectancies of success and achievement: The influential roles of need for cognition and general or specific self-concepts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 (3), 490-500.
• Fabrigar, L., S. Smith, R. Petty & S. Crites. (2006). Understanding knowledge effects on behavior consistency: The role of relevance, complexity, and amount of knowledge. Journal of Personality & Social Personality 90 (4), 556-577.
• Heyman, G. & Cristine Legare. (2005). Children's evaluation of source of information about traits. Developmental Psychology 41 (4), 636-647.

More papers on Social Cognitive Theory on Personality:

• Term Paper # 135673 : "Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory"
• Term Paper # 95309 : "Social Cognitive Theory"
• Term Paper # 129984 : "Social Cognitive Theory in Relation to Personality"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: